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Tuesday, August, 28, 2012 - 12:12:26 PM

Scott Cressman, Independent staff

Mitchell Good skates on the plastic ice he had installed in his Wellesley home’s basement this summer.

Indoor ice keeps hockey alive in Wellesley through the summer

Scott CressmanIndependent staff

It’s never too hot for hockey, especially when you don’t even need ice. Young players are discovering a new way to keep their hockey skills sharp this summer in a Wellesley basement, where Mitchell Good has installed plastic ice to keep playing year-round.

Back in May, the 23-year-old Good turned his basement on Welwood Avenue into a hockey heaven, complete with synthetic plastic ice that players can shoot, stickhandle, and even skate on.

The “ice” is made of quarter-inch-thick sheets of plastic, 12 feet wide by 22 feet long. The synthetic ice is part of Good’s new hockey training business, called “Hockey Skills and Development.”

The fake ice lets hockey players replicate anything they could do on real ice, but the plastic does have a little less glide, Good explained. Pucks or skate blades don’t slide as far as they would on the frozen version.

“We’ve gotten pretty much all positive reviews,” Good said. “There’s a lot of people who don’t even know this stuff exists.

“It takes a little bit of getting used to, but even by the end of the first sessions they’re convinced.”
Good has played hockey for nearly all of his young life, starting in Wellesley minor hockey, then the Jr. B Stratford Cullitons. He now plays for the Wilfrid Laurier varsity hockey squad, and decided his two decades of competitive hockey experience might be a valuable product.

“I’ve been in hockey for almost 20 years, so I figured I might as well try to get something out of it,” Good said. “And hopefully make some kids around the area a little bit better and give them some advice I wish I had when I was their age.”

The business has been full-time work for Good this summer, and he has around 25 kids from age five and up coming for personalized coaching and practice. He also hopes to keep clients coming for indoor lessons occasionally through the winter.

Good said he tries to use his smaller ice surface to put students in awkward situations so that they’ll be comfortable with handling the puck or shooting in a variety of game situations.

“Everything comes from the basics, and I believe that good mechanics can do so much,” he said.

The chance to practice shooting and stickhandling on synthetic ice with skates is a big advantage over doing the same thing off-ice, Good said. The height difference and balance of being on skates is crucial.

“The fact that they’re on their skates and practicing with their skates makes a big difference,” he said. “They get a lot more out of it that way.”

Since the plastic surface is a little less slick than true ice, it actually helps young players refine their stick handling, he added. The puck will stick and roll if not handled correctly, so it’s a good teaching tool.

“With the synthetic ice, it reveals a lot of your bad habits right away,” he said.

The artificial ice also enables him to give one-on-one lessons for a reasonable cost, compared to the hefty price tag of renting an entire ice surface.

Good previously worked for five years at Zone Sports in Waterloo, where they also have synthetic ice.

He bought the plastic ice surface from a Toronto company. After they delivered the sheets to his door, it only took an hour or so to easily snap them together. He installed a net at one end, then put hard plastic and thick rubber mats on the walls to keep pucks from punching through the drywall.

The synthetic ice is durable, and the company told Good it should last seven to 10 years. Still, skate blades do dig up plastic shavings, and he has to periodically sand down the surface and apply a sealant to give it more glide.

Playing hockey indoors still means taking some special care, Good added. His students and his friends have already damaged the ceiling or the lights when flipping pucks or winding up for a slap shot; even on plastic ice, hockey is a sport with no high-sticking allowed.